


Untitled

by malchanceux



Series: Homecoming [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'm not really sure how to tag this, Oh look my first set of drabbles, PTSD, but under 300 each so did I win the thing??, kinda fail since they're so long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 15:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malchanceux/pseuds/malchanceux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A telling of how Oliver has changed post-Lain Yu through the five major senses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

**Author's Note:**

> I still don't know what I'm doing.

**Taste**

            Two months home and Oliver’s palate is slowly but surely returning to pre-castaway standards.

            If a meal isn’t strictly fresh and unseasoned, he’s learned to take smaller portions. He can clear his plate, if it isn’t too much, and he hasn’t thrown up a meal in weeks.

            Still, salt is a sharp, near unpleasant tang on his tongue and used as sparingly as possible, and almost anything sweet can leave him nauseated within a few small bites.

            Dinner is a stunted affair of forced casual conversation on his part. He’s trying, but the art of dinner small talk left him years ago. Still, no one comments, and though Oliver can see Moira and Thea—and even Walter, on occasion—sending his plate a troubled glance, with how little of what’s prepared he’s able to stomach, they never break the easy peace and speak their mind.

            He’s grateful.

**Sound**

            Oliver is hyperaware of every little sound the world around him makes, and it is exhausting.

            On the island, things were quiet. Sure, there was Slade and Shado—constant bickering and a running sarcastic commentary—and the occasional burst of gunfire or blades clashing, but there were no cars, no alarms, and no cellphones. Often when pursing a target—or _being_ pursed—all Oliver would hear for hours on end was distant bird song, their feet dreading carefully through the underbrush, and his own breathing.

            For the first week back, he flinches whenever a phone rings, specifically: his own. No one comments, and within days Oliver has trained himself out of the physical response. He has to, beyond the embarrassment of startling, because with the response unconditioned, he fears he may hurt someone by accident.

            Loud music puts him on edge. If he cannot hear the world around him properly, how can he protect himself from ambushed attacks? How many times had his sense of hearing alone saved him on the island? Countless. But back in the real world he has to play his part—the playboy—so when Tommy or Thea turn the volume up and up and up, Oliver grits his teeth and forces his body to relax.

            Instead, when the music blares loud enough to vibrate through his bones, Oliver keeps his eyes alert. He makes note of exits and potential weapons and labels _everyone_ in the room as a possible threat. The world will see the party boy billionaire they expect, and Oliver will see the battleground he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to leave behind.

**Touch**

            The lingering embrace of his mother or sister hugging him sends Oliver into an unpleasant head space. He hasn’t had the opportunity for prolonged, _safe_ contact in five years, and it’s starting to rear itself as a problem.

            Oliver finds himself dreaming, longing, _yearning_ for another’s touch, for the pleasant tingle of skin to skin contact he remembers from another life time, but the thought of trusting someone enough to hold him for any length of time makes him physically ill and flighty. When he thinks of warm arms wrapping him into a soft embrace, a vision of a knife in the back or between the ribs quickly follows.

            Neck snapped. Eyes gouged. Throat slit. His belly gutted. The paranoia won’t leave him be, for any measure of time, and he finds that even letting Thea or Moira in close is hard. He can stay his hand for them, but anyone else? Oliver fears _fight_ would win over his senses.

            He fears what he might do to someone if he let them get too close.

**Smell**

            Oliver dreams of wet dirt, iron blood, and unwashed bodies. He wakes to his mother’s perfume, Thea’s scented lip-gloss, and car fumes.

            It is steadily driving him insane.

            Artificial smells pollute the air almost wherever he goes. Around the mansion, it is the scent of candles, air fresheners, and detergents that haunt him. At Queens Consolidated the scent of cleaning products, men’s cologne, and paper ink takes form as a sharp pain behind his left eye and throbs with his heartbeat. In the city, car exhaust, cigarette smoke, and stale air makes him nauseous.

            Oliver knows that if he is to soldier on as planned he’ll have to get used to the stench of the “real world”, but sometimes he can’t help but long for open forest and clean, humid air filling his lungs.

**Sight**

            On the island Oliver got used to the dark.

            There was no electricity on Lain Yu, no house to return to at the end of every day, no light switch to turn on to combat the shadows in the dead of night.

            One evening he remembers starting a small fire. He doesn’t remember his exact reasoning why, but when Slade got a hold of him he’d been furious. The pit was covered in dirt in moments and Slade’s fist at his gut seconds after the last amber went dark.

 _"Are you_ trying _to get us killed! Use your fucking head, boy!”_

            So after five years, Oliver became a master of navigating the night.

            It takes him two weeks to get used to turning lights on around the house when the sun goes down. During that time, he scares Walter, Thea, and Moira at least twice each half to death.

            _“Jesus Oliver, you just gave me a heart attack.”_

_“Oh! Uh—Oliver. I didn’t know you were in here.”_

_“Oliver! Oh, you scared me. What are you doing sitting in the dark?”_

            He gets it right eventually, and puts himself into the habit of switching lights on even though he doesn’t need them. No one needs to know that, and the sooner people start seeing him as the playboy, billionaire, party brat that left five years ago on a yacht with his father, the better.


End file.
